About

Tschabalala Self (b.1990 Harlem, New York) lives and works in the Hudson Valley, New York. Self is an artist who builds a singular style from the syncretic use of painting, printmaking and sculpture to explore ideas surrounding figuration. She constructs depictions of predominantly women using a combination of sewn, printed, and painted materials, traversing different artistic and craft traditions. The formal and conceptual aspects of Self’s work seek to expand her critical inquiry into selfhood and human flourishing. Recent solo exhibitions and performances include Longlati Foundation, Shanghai (2025); Espoo Museum of Modern Art, Finland (2024); Kunstmuseum, St. Gallen (2023); Le Consortium, Dijon (2022); Performa 2021 Biennial, New York City (2021); Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore (2021); ICA, Boston (2020); among others.

Self’s work is included in collections such as Albertina Museum, Vienna, Austria; The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, USA; Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, USA; Consortium Museum, Dijon, France; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, USA; The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC, USA; ICA Boston, Boston, USA; Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, USA; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, USA; Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris, Paris, France; Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, Los Angeles, USA; New Museum, New York, USA; Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich, Germany; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, USA; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, USA; Stedelijk Museum Collection, Amsterdam, Netherlands; Studio Museum Harlem, New York, USA; and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, USA; among others.

Her work has been exhibited at:

Longlati Foundation, Shanghai (2025); Espoo Museum of Modern Art, Helsinki (2024); Kunstmuseum, St. Gallen (2023); Le Consortium, Dijon (2022); ARKEN Museum of Modern Art, Ishøj (2022); Haus der Kunst, Munich (2022); Kunsthalle Duesseldorf, Duesseldorf (2021); Brooklyn Museum, New York (2021); Pinakothek Der Moderne, Munich (2021); Centro Pecci Prato, Prato (2020/21); MOCA Jacksonville, Jacksonville (2020); The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery, Saratoga Springs (2020); Pérez Art Museum, Miami (2020); Kunstverein Hannover, Hannover (2020); Whitechapel Gallery, London (2020); Rubell Museum, Miami (2019); Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin (2019); Philadelphia Art Museum, Philadelphia; Museum of Modern art San Diego (2019); MoMA PS1, New York (2019); Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw (2019); Jewish Museum, San Francisco (2019); Le Centre Régional d’Art Contemporain OCCITANIE / Pyrénées-Méditerranée, Sète (2018); Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville (2018); University Art Museum, Albany State University, Albany (2018); Mana Contemporary, Jersey City (2018); New Museum, New York (2017); Tramway, Glasgow (2017); Parasol Unit Foundation for Contemporary Art, London (2017); The Museum of Sex, New York (2017), Art and Practice, Los Angeles (2016), The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York (2016).

Mission Statement:

My current body of work is concerned with the iconographic significance of the Black female body in contemporary culture. My work explores the emotional, physical, and psychological impact of the Black female body as icon, and is primarily devoted to examining the intersectionality of race, gender, and sexuality. Collective fantasies surround the Black body and have created a cultural niche in which exists our contemporary understanding of Black femininity and personhood. My practice is dedicated to naming these phenomena.

The fashioning of my figures reflects their imagined emotional, physical, and psychological states. They are constructed, yet real—and share the same existential concerns as you and I. In each work, there exists a tension between foreground and background.

Silhouettes emerge and disintegrate into the pictorial plane. Narratives arise and assumptions shift. Together, the subjects of my paintings—the characters within my works—create a community and hold space for varied iterations of a shared experience.

The fantasies and attitudes surrounding the Black female body are both accepted and rejected within my practice, and through this disorientation, new possibilities arise. I am attempting to provide alternative, and perhaps fictional, explanations for the voyeuristic tendencies toward the gendered and racialized body—a body which is both exalted and abject.

I aspire to hold space and create a cultural vacuum in which these bodies can exist for their own pleasure and self-realization, free from others’ assertions and the othering gaze. I hope to redirect misconceptions propagated within and projected upon the Black body.

Multiplicity and possibility are essential to my practice and general philosophy. My subjects are fully aware of their conspicuousness and are unmoved by the viewer. Their role is not to show, explain, or perform, but rather “to be.”

In being, their presence is acknowledged and their significance felt.